Improved belts and exams management

on Feb 10, 2012

We are very excited to introduce you to this major update in our sofware! Finaly, with DojoExpert you can save all relevant data about belts, exams, belt requirements and grades. No matter what are your exam strucutre, our system is flexible enough to support various requirements. So, lets start with introduction to our news, step by step.

Belt order and requirements

The first thing you will notice when entering belts settings is some new columns in belts table:

First, we simplified the belts and removed the kyu/dan and rank settings – now they are specified in one column “color”. Next, we added the “order” column in which you can specify the order of belts – so that system knows which belt is next/previous. Why is this important, you will see later. Then you will see two new columns: “required months” and “required attendance”. Here you can specify your reqirements for next belt testing that your members must meet before taking the test. You can set it both, none or just one. E.g., in test account, to get green belt, the member is required to wear red belt for 6 months and to attend a minimum of 48 training sessions (since last belt testing for red belt). In this example, for white belt there are no requirements (anyone can be promoted to this belt).

Next promotion – who have met the requirements?

To see who is eligable to be promoted to next belt, go to “belts” page. There you can see a little change in page design. Now you have 2 tabs: “past promotions” and “next promotion”. The past promotion table is already familiar to you, but click the “next promotion” tab and then the “load list” button and the system will load the list of members with requirements data that looks like this:

Here you can see which members did met the requirements that you set in “belts settings” for their next belt (based on belt ordering you set). You can also see the current belt of member and the date of promotion. In this example, the months ratio for Butts Eugene is 3.93/3 which means that it has been passed 3.93 months since last belt exam (10/12/2011) and the required time is 3 monts for orange belt, so the months requirement is met. Attendance ratio is 31/24, meaning, Eugene attended 31 class sessions since last exam and the requirement is 24. So, the attendance requirement is also met and this member is eligible to promote to next belt (column “Eligible”). By clicking the “promote” link the data are transfered to “Promote” section so that you can easy go ahead and promote this member (adding to “past promotions” table).

Belt exam grades

And now we get to more interesting stuff: You can specify your own custom grades, we call it “parameters”, that you will be grading on your belt exams in your dojo. Go to “belts settings” and under the “ranking settings” there is a new section called “Exam grades parameters”. Here you can add them by specifing their name, type (number, text, list) and if applies to all belt exams or just selected one. We have the example in our Test account that looks like this:

So, in this example there are 3 parameters that applies to all belts (kihon, kata, suggestions). Kihon and kata are type of “number” which means that when grading you can enter only numbers. Suggestion is the type of “text” which enables you to add any type of information in your grades. “List” types are interesting ones: you can specify comma separated values that are eligible when grading, e.g. “ippon kumite” can be graded as “poor”, “good” or “very good”. The grades per exam and member you can enter in “past promotions” table, so lets see how this looks.

Go to “belts” and you can notice new link “grades” in table “past promotions”. By clicking it a popup window apears that lets you specify the grades for this member/belt:

Lets see the grades for Etheridge Claude for yellow belt exam. Under the table which reperesents entered grades there is “add” form to add grades. This form (drop down list) lists only parameters that are eligible for all belts and the specified belt (yellow in this case). Here you can see that all grades have been entered except the “ipon kumite” which is a type of “list”, so the grade is selected from dropdown that is build from comma separeted values you have specified.

Preparing for exam: print exam list!

On the day of exam you can print your exam list which is generated based on grades parameters you have specified. Go to “belts”, “next promotion”, load the list and use filter to filter the table on “next belt” parameter, e.g. “orange belt”. The table will filter the data and you will see only the members that have yellow belt and are supouse to test for orange. Under the table you will find “print exam list” link. Click it, and the table that you can print will load:

Do this for every belt exam that you will have and take it with you in your dojo. Mark your grades during the exam and when you come home, enter it in DojoExpert.

Grades reports

Once entered into DojoExpert, grades can be viewed, printed or exported with “Grades report”. Here is one example:

And that’s it. We hope you will find thouse features useful. More reports and improvements are coming, so stay tuned!